Friday, January 05, 2018

Appendix N Review: The Gods of Mars

After the events of A Princess of Mars, John Carter returned to
Earth and spent ten long years trying to find a way back. In our
world, Edgar Rice Burroughs produced the sequel, The Gods
of Mars, in 1913, a year after
Under the Moons of Mars was
serialized. Like its predecessor (and Tarzan of the Apes,
which he published in 1912 also), The Gods of Mars
was serialized in the All-StoryMagazine incarnation
of Argosy. It would be published in novel form in 1918.

John
Carter returns to Mars in a way similar to how he first got there: by
astral projection/wishing really hard. Again, the “How” he gets
there isn't important, its just a means to an end. He arrives on
Barsoom the same way as the first time: bare-ass naked.

Only
this time, he's in a scenic forest in a river valley.

Populated
by white apes and carnivorous tree-men that want to kill and eat
anyone who arrives.

Welcome
to Martian Heaven: The Valley Dor, endpoint of the sacred River Iss.
Leaving the valley is considered blasphemy and cause for execution.

Martian Heaven sucks.

On
arriving, John sees some Green Martians attacked and killed by the
local fauna, and rushes to the aid of the lone survivor, who happens
to be Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark and Carter's best friend on Mars
not named Woola.

The
two fight their way out of the forest and into the cliffs of the
valley, where they find the Holy Therns, white skinned Martians who
claim to be the gods of Mars and control the creatures of the valley,
enslaving anyone who survives them. They also wear cute little blonde
Prince Valiant wigs because they're bald and vain.

John
kills one of their priests, takes his wig and costume as a disguise,
rescues a Red Martian woman named Thuvia, and the three rampage their
way through the Thern fortress, reaching the top only to find it
attacked by sky pirates. John sends Thuvia and Tars Tarkas off and
boards one of their airships, killing the crew save one, Xodar, a
prince of the Black Martians, the self-proclaimed First Born of Mars,
and incidentally, a people also claiming to be gods. He also rescues
a White Martian girl, Phaidor, who falls in love with John, but John
is faithful to his wife Dejah Thoris, and is also disturbed by
Phaidor's casual cruelty.

Xodar
has some tricks up his sleeve, and John & Phaidor are captured by
reinforcements, and taken to Omean, an underground sea where the
Black Martians make their home. The First Born are ruled by the cruel
(self-proclaimed again) goddess Issus, and like the Therns, they
enslave the other Martian races to serve them and fight in their
arenas.

Hmm:
long-lived, beautifully-featured, ebony-skinned, underground raiders
who worship a cruel goddess and love to party at the expense of others.

It
really activates the almonds.

Anyway,
Phaidor is taken to be a handmaiden of Issus. John is sent to the
arena. Xodar is sent as well, since he lost in combat to John, and
must serve him. Naturally, the two become best buds working to escape
from their virtual death sentence. In prison, they find a pale young
Red Martian youth who is obviously John Carter's son Carthoris, but
the book plays coy with it for a while until the two are able to have
a moment's rest.

There's
already so much going on that going through the plot would take pages
and pages. John Carter escapes. We get back to Helium and Red Martian
intrigue. A reunion with cool dude Kantos Kan. Dejah Thoris went to
the Valley Dor to look for her husband and son. John Carter wants to
go after her. More intrigue. A titanic air battle between the fleets
of three navies, and John Carter cutting down any bastard that stands
between him and Dejah Thoris.

And
then it ends on a massive cliffhanger because by this point Burroughs
knew he had his audience hooked.

While
some of the twists are blatantly telegraphed and a lot of convenient
coincidences take place that stretch belief, the book hits the ground
running and never lets up on the adventure.

The
section that stands out the most to me is where John is taken to the
arena and sees a group of female slaves inspected by the hideous
Issus and a few are selected and taken away. John learns that the
ones taken away were to be eaten by Issus and her court, while the
rest would be torn apart by animals in the arena.

In a
modern story, John would feel bad as he watched the innocent women
get slaughtered for the entertainment of the First Born, then do some
arena fighting, then plot his escape, then try and fail to escape,
then mope a lot, then try again, then maybe succeed and that would
take up half of the book and whoever was helping him escape would die and he'd feel extra bad about it.

Not
here. This is Pulp! As soon as John learns that the women are going
to be killed, the red mist descends over his eyes and he punches his
way out of his cage (because Earthmen have super strength on Barsoom,
remember?) and begins butchering everything between him and the
throne of Issus. Not only does Carthoris join him in this, but every
single slave in the arena, man and woman, join his uprising and John
Carter nearly succeeds in reaching Issus, if not for the ancient hag
queen's trickery. And this is only about halfway into the book!

Burroughs
is awesome. John Carter is awesome. The Gods of Mars
is awesome. Read the Barsoom books. That's an order.